Why Oh Rye? by Lucy Lakestone

Author:Lucy Lakestone
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781943134465
Publisher: Sky Diary Productions
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

18

I couldn’t wait around and find out if rescue was coming. More slats of the wall where Beau had forced me into this claustrophobic musical treehouse caught fire as the flames spread.

Staying low and maneuvering around the machinery above my head— the belts, ropes, pulleys and fans—I got as far from the flames as I could and rapidly assessed my options. The spinning gizmos partially stuck out of cutouts in the slatted walls. I’d have to get out of one of those windows.

The problem was, the fans and spinners were slotted in there, too, and while they weren’t actively spinning now, they were definitely in my way. Could I take one down? I probably had a tool in my bag that could loosen a bolt or two, but how long would that take?

Maybe brute force was the answer. The machinery was clever and well installed, but those spinners weren’t made to stand up to the weight of this cheese-of-the-month-club-enhanced body.

I chose the lowest spinner near me, a hoop with fat flexible black tubes lashed to it in arcs to catch the wind. It stuck out of a gap cut where two walls of slats met—a corner. I looked closely. The framework for this spinner was light wood, not metal as I’d feared.

With a silent apology to the artists, I used a cross-support beam on the wall to hoist myself up so I could lean against the hoop that held the tubes. After a moment of creaking in protest, the whole spinner collapsed, dumping me on the metal grate floor.

I cursed and coughed, trying to breathe through the smoke and rising heat. The sirens sounded close now, but the flames crawled closer, creeping around both walls that met at this corner. I clambered to my feet. I had to hurry.

While part of the spinner’s axle and hoop remained, I now had room to squeeze out of the gap in the wall. Probably.

I yanked off my bag and tossed it to the ground first. I looked down. Maybe I could use the leg of the structure as a kind of slide. It was slightly angled, shaped like a tall, two-sided pyramid made of wood. But it would be rough. The leg’s decorative slats pointed to and almost met at the corners, but there were no smooth edges.

Then again, it wasn’t on fire. Yet. My ass was getting hot, and not in a good way.

I used the crossbar on the wall to hoist myself up again and squeezed into the “window,” getting stuck halfway through.

Rip. “Damn it!” Now there was a nice tear along the waistline of my cute bunny dress. But the flames were close enough at my right that I knew I didn’t have a choice. I sucked in my stomach, pushed farther through and hoisted my left leg over. I grabbed onto slats sticking up at the bottom edge of the opening and pulled my other leg through so I was facing the shack.

A scene of horror lay before me, a chaotic inferno of disintegrating wood.

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